The Botticelli Secret - By Marina Fiorato Page 0,48

for the pinpoints of light were going out as they reached shore, as quickly as they had been lit. As our boat drifted in, we could see that numerous dark figures, each with a bucket, were dousing the candles as they came. I assumed that they were employed by the commune, to lessen the risk of fire on this dry spring night, but something silent and secret in the watchers’ manner made me hold my tongue, and sink down into the bottom of the boat at a single motion of Brother Guido’s hand. We bobbed into the bankside bulrushes and crept from our vessel onto the marshy bank. Brother Guido pulled me low in the bushes.

“Where are we?” I whispered.

“That is the Fortezza Vecchia, the old castle. See the crenellated tower high above?”

I looked carefully through the leaves. “You said the old castle,” I whispered. “What is it now?”

“The Arsenale.”

Even I knew what an arsenale was. I had slept with enough shipbuilders in my time. But I also knew that they were, usually, dependent on daylight for their constructions and did not work at night. “What’s going on?”

Brother Guido shrugged, beckoned. Bent double, we crept from the undergrowth to the foot of the fortress and followed the line of the curtain wall, secret in its massive shadow. As we drew close we could hear sounds of building work—hammering soldering, and sawing—and the shouts of workmen, which by some acoustic trick had been unintelligible on the silent water.

“The curve of the river, and the thickness of the old castle walls, must conceal the noise from the city,” whispered Brother Guido. He pointed up and we passed through a little doorway. Above us there loomed the derelict tower of the old castle, with half a spiral stair and rooks roosting in the eaves. We climbed as high as we could, away from the deafening cacophony, and at length reached the top of the tower. At our backs Pisa glittered like the firmament of Venus. But before and below us lay a sight belonging to warlike Mars.

On a man-made lake inside the massive ruined castle was a flotilla of immense ships at various stages of construction. With sturdy prows and crenellated forecastles, they resembled exactly a sight I had seen only yesterday. “The ship on the tower!” I whispered to Brother Guido in a sunburst of revelation, and he nodded hard and repeatedly. He had seen it too—the exact design of these warships had been etched onto the Leaning Tower of Pisa, and sat carved above the door of that great edifice. A clue, a cue, a code writ in stone. I felt it in my ribs as sure as day that this fleet of vessels was somehow connected to the Prima-vera and the cartone I held firmly in my bodice.

I watched the torchlit workers, hundreds and thousands of them. The sailmakers swarmed over the great ships like ants, the smelters and welders were as busy and hot with their hammerings as blacksmiths in hell. The smell of cedarwood was strong in my nose, the tar for the ropes, and the canvas of the sails. Then Brother Guido tapped my shoulder; I turned to look and there, beyond the fortress where the river was dark, was the dusky shape of another ship, and another beyond that, and another beyond that, as far as my eyes could strain into the night. Had the torches progressed farther down the river they might have fired the whole armada and reduced them to charcoal. These ships were complete, ready, and finished right to the last detail. The closest ship’s crow’s nest was next to the tower where we stood, and nearly as high. The flag of Pisa, emblazoned with the city’s cross, fluttered so close I could have caught it in my hand. Madonna. What was going on?

My gasp was a little too loud. Shouts were given from below and the shipbuilders began to point. Half a dozen ran to the stair.

“The river!” cried Brother Guido, and took my hand, as if to jump into the dark deeps.

I yanked his arm nearly from its socket. “You’re crazy! It’s too high!” I hissed, for we were a good forty feet from the inky water. “Here.” With a great leap I jumped riverward but made it to the crow’s nest of the nearest ship and held out my hand to Brother Guido. “Jump!”

He leaped, became tangled in his habit, and scrabbled at the edge of the crow’s nest platform.